Hey, I was wondering if I could pick your brain about something. I'm thinking about setting myself up a a Wordpress, more for personal use than business. Should I go straight to WP, or use something like http://website.1and1.com/make-your-own-website which has a WP package? Still a bit wet behind the ears, so I was thinking that might be a bit easier to start off with? Or am I just barking up the wrong tree?

I know virtually squat about Wordpress--there are people here who have experience with it and will surely pop in--but, just on a gut level, I'd avoid places like 1&1. If I'm remembering the bit of research I did on Wordpress a year or so ago for my sister, I'd probably start out with the free version approach to Wordpress and then if I found I liked it/was using it a lot, I'd then investigate the paid approaches...

Location: Subtropical Queensland, Australia, between the mountains and the Coral Sea

Posts: 4,436

Quote:

Originally Posted by KWF80

Hey, I was wondering if I could pick your brain about something. I'm thinking about setting myself up a a Wordpress, more for personal use than business. Should I go straight to WP, or use something like http://website.1and1.com/make-your-own-website which has a WP package? Still a bit wet behind the ears, so I was thinking that might be a bit easier to start off with? Or am I just barking up the wrong tree?

Thanks for reading.
K

My advice would be to go straight to WordPress, and use their free WP hosting. It's free, it's always up-do-date, there are plenty of themes to choose from, and they're nice people to deal with.

Oh I didn't know WP had a free option. I was worried about paying for something and then having no idea what to do with it. If it's free i don't ind fiddling about with it until I get the hang of it. Thanks for that Anne. And thanks for the head's up Terrie.

Location: Subtropical Queensland, Australia, between the mountains and the Coral Sea

Posts: 4,436

Quote:

Originally Posted by KWF80

Oh I didn't know WP had a free option. I was worried about paying for something and then having no idea what to do with it. If it's free i don't ind fiddling about with it until I get the hang of it. Thanks for that Anne. And thanks for the head's up Terrie.

I'd second that - Wordpress.com is free as long as you accept a URL like yourname.wordpress.com and advertising, and using a free template.

You can pay extra for your own domain, to lose the ads and do your own template customisation - but all of those are considerations for later. Dive in and start playing - it really is an incredibly powerful and flexible system!

I've developed a couple of sites (self-hosted rather than on the commercial site, so I can tinker with the code), so if you need some help, I may be able to answer your questions. The support for Wordpress is pretty good and it's almost certain someone else has already had the same problem and been answered ion the forums.

The free system is OK but limiting on what you can do with the templates & code. For a basic starter it is perfect, though. Once you get the hang of using WP, most users start to add in desirable extras, but then it can be cheaper to run your own WP installation on a proper paid for host - but not a "pile 'em high & sell 'em cheap" hoster like Godaddy or 1&1 where you can so often just be buying headaches.